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It's always nice to be able to capture your life's experiences in a song and hold the emotion in that way.

I think when you have raw emotion in a song, it makes it great.

I try to just encompass the entire feeling and emotion behind the song the best way possible, and if that's 100,000 screaming guitars right in your face, then that's what's going down.

Music has this emotional thing to it, and it touches people in crazy ways. The power of having that power is something that, once you have it, you don't want it to ever end.

Music is an emotion, and I put it out there.

Emotions are the fuel to really move you along - that's the only way you can create music. If you don't feel any emotions, it's not going to happen.

I can sit in my room and write a song that I think might be a hit. I can sort of make myself do that, and then I'll play it to a friend, and they'll say, 'Oh, that's nice.' But when something happens to me, and I sit down and write a song to get rid of my emotions, they'll turn around and say, 'Wow, that's great.'

Occasionally, you get a nice surprise when someone covers your song in an extraordinary way.

Artists are overcompensating with this aggressive, energetic, hyperstimulating music - it's like someone shaking you. But it can't move people on an emotional level.

I always want to bring emotion across in a straightforward way. I don't want to get histrionic when I'm singing. For me that's just not interesting; it goes too far down one road.